To Rebuild, Jets Can Use Chiefs’ Blueprint

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After finishing 2-14 in 2012, Kansas City acquired quarterback Alex Smith and began a turnaround. The Jets, who did not pursue Smith, have similarities to the 2012 Chiefs.CreditCreditEd Zurga/Associated Press

Once there was a 1-7 team. It had the worst turnover margin in the N.F.L. and the worst quarterback situation, too. It gave up a lot of points, despite Pro Bowl talent on defense, and scored not nearly enough. Its fan base fumed and frothed, shamed by the on-field product and disenchanted with the leadership and direction.

Every loss increased the scrutiny and accelerated a potential overhaul.

Two years before the Jets spiraled toward a rotten season that could yet produce sweeping change, the Kansas City Chiefs endured the same misery — only worse. When the teams play Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium, the Jets could look across the field and glimpse a model for rehabilitation.

It seems bleak now for the Jets, much as it did in 2012 for the Chiefs, who through their first eight games turned the ball over 29 times, were outscored by 107 points and, incredibly, did not once hold a lead in regulation. The atmosphere was so toxic that some fans attended games dressed in black, as if mourning, and hired planes to fly banners over Arrowhead calling for the firing of the general manager, Scott Pioli.

The fan base “had kind of lost hope and lost trust,” Mitch Holthus, in his 21st season as the radio voice of the Chiefs, said in a telephone interview.

He added, “There’s really an amazing pride here, like the Packers or the Steelers, but there was this bewilderment of like, ‘Where’s this all going?’ ”

It all led to a new coach and a new general manager, who traded for the sort of quarterback who would no longer throw away victories. It all led to nine straight wins to open the 2013 season, an 11-5 record and a playoff berth.

The Chiefs’ turnaround, a year after they went 2-14, epitomizes the unpredictable nature of the N.F.L. Teams, with a stroke of luck (or Luck, in the Colts’ case) and the right moves, can be competitive again in a short time.

“You never know until you get into it and see what happens,” Chiefs Coach Andy Reid said when asked whether he expected the team to contend so soon after he took over. “There’s such a small margin between winning and losing in the National Football League.”

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Chiefs fans in 2012, when the team went 2-14. The next season, Kansas City went 11-5 and made the playoffs.CreditChris Ochsner/Associated Press

That is what John Idzik, the Jets’ general manager, said — or seemed to say, at least — in his rambling preamble last Monday to his state-of-the-team news conference: that in five of the Jets’ seven straight losses, they could have tied the score or gone ahead in the fourth quarter.

Reasonable people can disagree about just how close the Jets were to winning those games. Too many other factors — turnovers, penalties, crushing scoring drives allowed — render the issue moot.

The popular sentiment is that Idzik is seeking to recreate the template for success forged in Seattle, to develop an East Coast version of the Seahawks. Another prototype might be the Chiefs, who on the field do what the Jets strive to do, only better.

Kansas City’s defense, coordinated by the former Jets linebackers coach Bob Sutton, has yielded the third-fewest points and yards in the league. Its offense, a West Coast-style scheme favored by the Jets coordinator Marty Mornhinweg, who worked under Reid in Philadelphia, has averaged 30 points in winning four of its last five games. Its quarterback, Alex Smith, has thrown four interceptions this season, and 11 total — compared with 32 touchdown passes — in 22 games with the Chiefs.

“I think if you put Alex Smith in that offense, you might win 10 games on that football team,” the former quarterback Rich Gannon said in an interview conducted when the Jets were 1-4. “I really believe that.”

The Jets will never know, and it might be just as well. Smith has flourished in Kansas City, but that does not necessarily mean he would have elsewhere.

Still, if Idzik, in his early days as general manager, had wanted to acquire Smith, he could have. The 49ers made Smith available after the emergence of Colin Kaepernick, and Kansas City apparently concluded that Smith would stabilize the position better than anyone in a draft that yielded E. J. Manuel, Mike Glennon and, of course, Geno Smith.

“Unless you have Manning, Brees or Aaron Rodgers,” said Mark Dominik, who spent five years as the Buccaneers’ general manager and is now an analyst for ESPN, “the next-best type of quarterback you can have is the guy who’s going to manage the game and not make bad decisions.”

Some years, it works out like that. The team with the top overall pick needs a quarterback, but there is no obvious choice. Houston went 2-14 in 2013, drafted Jadeveon Clowney and opted for Ryan Fitzpatrick at quarterback; the Texans are now 4-4. Indianapolis, one of the league’s more successful franchises, picked the right years to struggle, when Peyton Manning and Andrew Luck were available.

If the Jets continue to fizzle, they might not have much competition for a player like Marcus Mariota of Oregon or even Jameis Winston of Florida State: The league’s two other worst teams, Oakland (David Carr) and Jacksonville (Blake Bortles), just invested in quarterbacks in the last draft.

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With six teams off this week, quarterback Alex Smith could help fantasy teams with a very favorable matchup with the Jets. Marshawn Lynch and Andre Johnson also have great matchups in Week 9.CreditCreditStreeter Lecka/Getty Images

Much like Jets fans with Joe Namath, Chiefs supporters have yearned for a franchise quarterback since the days of Len Dawson. Few expected that quarterback to be Matt Cassel or Brady Quinn, but even fewer could have predicted the calamity that would unfold for the Chiefs in 2012.

As the Jets did with Chris Johnson and Eric Decker, the Chiefs added players in the off-season who they thought would be their best group of offensive playmakers in several years. Quinn turned down more money elsewhere to sign with Kansas City.

“Looking at the team on paper,” said Quinn, now an analyst for Fox Sports, “you would have thought we were going to win the A.F.C. West with all the players that had been brought in.”

By the end of a season of adversity, compounded by a linebacker’s murder of his girlfriend and subsequent suicide outside the Chiefs’ training center, the losing had spread like a virus.

“Once one person gets it, then everyone else gets it, and I think people get accustomed to losing,” said Giants running back Peyton Hillis, who joined the Chiefs before the 2012 season.

Holthus said the mood around the organization improved within hours of Reid’s hiring. His arrival was like a pebble skimming in a pond, and the next ripple came from a restructuring of the organization.

The team’s chairman, Clark Hunt, streamlined a decades-old chain of command so that both Reid and the new general manager, John Dorsey, reported to him; before, the coach reported to the general manager, and the general manager to Hunt.

By the start of last season, more than half the roster had been turned over, but the defensive nucleus — Tamba Hali, Derrick Johnson, Justin Houston and Eric Berry — remained, as did the Chiefs’ All-Pro running back, Jamaal Charles. The Jets like their defensive core of Muhammad Wilkerson and Sheldon Richardson, but it is too soon to tell whether two other first-round picks, Dee Milliner, hampered by injuries, or Calvin Pryor, his strengths minimized by cornerback deficiencies, will join them.

Unless the Jets have a grounder-goes-through-Buckner’s-legs miracle of a second half, it seems inevitable that they will have a new coach next season.

If so, they will be one move closer to replicating the Chiefs’ reconstruction. It worked for Kansas City, but there are no guarantees it will work again.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section SP, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: To Rebuild, Jets Can Use Chiefs’ Blueprint. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe